The King is not an administrator, he's a warrior. He's good at killing people, and leading people. In a post-medieval setting, iIf he's smart he'll get a Cardinal Woolsey type to do his admninistration. The OD&D and 4e D&D default though is more of a dark age setting where there isn't any administration, a 'King' is one step removed from a barbarian warlord and is typically just the strongest and most ruthless warrior.
Justifying adventuring when you're the Boss
- Thread starter Rechan
- Start date
The King is not an administrator, he's a warrior. He's good at killing people, and leading people. In a post-medieval setting, iIf he's smart he'll get a Cardinal Woolsey type to do his admninistration. The OD&D and 4e D&D default though is more of a dark age setting where there isn't any administration, a 'King' is one step removed from a barbarian warlord and is typically just the strongest and most ruthless warrior.
Phaezen
Adventurer
To build on this a bit, the king is the symbolic strength of his kingdom. Day to day administrative tasks are handled by a council of eldars.
The king's duty is to adventure, discover lost treasures and knowledge, uncover ancient ruins, defeat epic and legendary threats to the kingdom that no mere man can handle. For does not the prophecy say, when the king faces his foes in battle the gods protect the kingdom?
The Shaman
First Post
The idea that the person in charge is an administrator who relies on underlings to actually perform the work is a fairly modern one.
In times past governors, generals, magistrates, and various lords and officers all took a direct hand in performing their many functions and responsibilities. For example, the duc de Guise was governor of the province of Provence and admiral of the Levant; he lead troops in the field and fleets at sea as well as conducted important diplomacy on behalf of the crown at the same time he was the crown's representative to a large and important frontier province and the highest ranking noble in one of the wealthiest and most influential families in France.
Consider that even into the 17th century kings still lead their armies in the field; François I of France was captured when his horse was cut down beneath him following a cavalry charge at Pavia in 1525 and Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden was killed leading another cavalry charge at Lützen in 1632, for example.
I don't see this as a problem for your game.
The group decided to make the PC (a paladin) the mayor, and the player than couldn't rationalize the mayor trapsing off rather than defending/ensuring everything was running smoothly back home. So he retired the PC and made a new character.
But I've seen the argument of "Pcs as rulers = PCs aren't going to adventure" before, and wanted to start a thread.
Haltherrion
First Post
It's going to vary a lot by the particular historical leader you look to for comparison but a duke leading armies and fleets probably is not going to look much like an adventurer. How much opoprtunity is he going to have to go off on his own agenda with a small group and do normal D&D adventuring "stuff"? The closest might be ship boardings when he and a hundred others might board or defend a ship as part of a larger fleet action. Seems unlikely the Duke would lead any small shore raids in person for instance. So that may not be a very adventuring kind of game.
But a leader of a pirate fleet might be much more "hands on". A mayor, as the OP indicates was the real leadership position, might be cast in the guise of a minor lord, and such folk might have to lead a town or manor defense in person, round up criminals, clear the surrounding area of various hazards. All good small-group D&D stuff.
Both pirate and mayor might have more opportunity to do adventurer-y kind of stuff in the capacity of their office if the ref and players don't mind making that the focus of the campaign for a while. They could also just pack up and do their own thing, leaving things in the hands of their underlings. I would think that is fine as well. Plenty of minor knights "adventured" for years at a time leaving things in their wive's hands (make them marry!
).Regarding the mayor in this particular campaign, though, if he was popularly elected and a paladin, it seems unlikely that the townsfolk would retain him as mayor if he was not present nor that a paladin would shirk his duties like that. Retiring the PC seems perfectly legit. Maybe after a year or two, the towns folk feel they don't need his services and he can rejoin the campaign.
There are always going to be certain actions a PC could take in-character that are going to remove him from the campaign. "My character feels he needs to go to a monastery and study for a few years." Cool, very in character, make something new to run in the meantime.
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The Shaman
First Post
That's what the duc de Soubise, a major leader of the Huguenots, did in 1625, capturing six French naval ships and escaping with them to La Rochelle.
Bureaucrats in Early Modern France could be expected to act as policemen on the spot if they saw a crime in progress. Diplomacy and espionage was carried out by marquises, dukes, and princes. Presidents (judges) both started and suppressed riots.
Again, I think it's a mistake to superimpose our modern understanding of leadership and administration on earlier time periods. And in a fantasy setting, you have even more leeway to use history as inspiration and license.
WayneLigon
Adventurer
Never have heard those words from a player. I'd tell him 'You're the boss; you decide what the duties are. If you want to adventure, who's stopping you?'
Besides, if he's the mayor of the town and he thinks he has to do everything himself, he's not doing it right. You hire competent managers and they'll handle the rest for you. All he should be doing is signing checks, and checking to make sure things are being done correctly. That shouldn't take him but an hour, half hour a day or so, and isn't anything that couldn't be put on hold for a week or so of adventuring time.
Haltherrion
First Post
I'm not familiar with the duke you cite but I know my way around Western Renaissance and earlier periods. I suspect that if the raid you mentioned captured 6 ships, his duties might still have been more directing than swinging a cutlass for most of the action. Directing the number of sailors necessary to capture 6 ships does not strike me as much in the way of typical D&D adventuring where the focus is on the success and failure of a small group's actions.
I think there are plenty of examples of lower level leaders acting in ways consistent with what seems to occur in most D&D games. But by the time you get to senior leaders, from historical precedent, it seems to me it gets pretty hard to keep the leader in the thick of things for the repeated actions necessary to carry a campaign.
Worse, it can also get very focused on one PC. Maybe you can contrive a number of actions around the King or Admiral or what not but the other players are playing second fiddle to the PC who is the leader, generally not an ideal situation.
The historical precedents I can think of, akin to your duc, are fairly limited and even for the person in question, small in number. There are examples like Titus who as a Roman general, during the campaign against the Jewish Rebellion 66-70 CE, several times went off on his own (with a very small group) for actions that fit a more classic D&D-encounter but this was 3-4 times over the course of 4 years. There have been rulers at times who liked to wade into the thick of things in army battles but that doesn't strike me as the type of D&D encounter that is all that interesting or meaningful (the leader rallied his troops by his action, the leader lost the battle by being unable to direct his troops, that's about it. The number of people the leader and his bodyguard actually killed was irrelevant.)
The Romans had a special recognition for generals who killed an opposing general and once Rome's armies grew large, this just didn't happen, despite the fact that Roman generals burned with ambition and would have loved to achieve it. I'm a little hazy on the details but if memory serves, there was a general who achieved this at the end of the Roman Republic and this event was remarkable because it hadn't happened in hundreds of years. IIRC he was denied the honors for this achievement by Octavian(?) so as not to outshine him.
Certainly there have been rulers who started as leaders of small bands and did some very daring and D&D-ish things to earn great renown and title. But once they had achieved great renown and the ability to deploy larger forces, it seems to me the scope for the leader historically to go off and act in a way where his sword arm was significant was very limited and in most D&D games, similarly ought to be limited.
The King of France wouldn't slink off from France with 4 good knights and take a citadel in the holy land by storm. He went to the Holy Land with a large army and remained in the midst of that army.
You can do what you want in your own campaign of course. The lower ranked the leader, the less the issue and the mayor of the OP is pretty low ranked it seems. But for someone to knock a player who thinks the demands of leadership are incompatible with adventuring seems unreasonable to me. If he thinks that his character is no longer able to adventure, he should be rewarded for playing his character well by being allowed to ease into a new character with little penalty.
When I last ran a conquest/leadership campaign, the King PC was indeed at the head of his army. But that involved a bunch of regular adventurey type encounters, albeit set against a backdrop of tens of thousands. The actual 'encounters' focused on the King and his immediate vicinity as he eg stormed the walls of the enemy Citadel of Jrebb, slew an enemy monster (Grey Render), fought through the Citadel, took on the enemy leader Evil High Priest Cavarnhissern in his lair, and rescued the princess - his future bride - and the other young royal hostages of what would soon be his client kingdoms.
frankthedm
First Post
Let it work, sometimes. The PC sends his troops and time passes. Months go by...
Sometimes the troops come back victorious.
Sometimes the troops come back devastated with intel that lets PCs know they are needed.
Sometimes the troops don't come back
Sometimes the troops come back changed.
AC, DR, SR & aura powers often can mean troops are useless. With spawning critters, sending an army only makes things worse.
Let the PCs make their decisions and let them piece things together. If their domain winds up destroyed because they sat out a time critical issue, let it happen.
Sometimes the troops come back victorious.
Sometimes the troops come back devastated with intel that lets PCs know they are needed.
Sometimes the troops don't come back
Sometimes the troops come back changed.
AC, DR, SR & aura powers often can mean troops are useless. With spawning critters, sending an army only makes things worse.
Let the PCs make their decisions and let them piece things together. If their domain winds up destroyed because they sat out a time critical issue, let it happen.
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